English Teaching: Practice and Critique
English teaching as a profession: To leave or not to leave
Volume 2 Number 3 December 2003
Nicholas Hopton (Culford School, United Kingdom)
[Introductory comment from Sue Brindley:
When Jackie Manuel of Sydney University and I began our longitudinal research project on Becoming an English Teacher, where we are currently tracking pre-service English teachers through their training and then into the first five years of their teaching career, I don’t think either of us realised the degree of engagement with the wider issues of education that out trainees would bring with them. Far from being passive absorbers of information, they are the model social constructivists, taking, reframing and producing knowledge and understanding in ways which are at times quite dazzling in the freshness of vision they bring.
As we move into researching the early career years, one of the areas of focus for us is the retention of teachers. Statistics from both the UK and Australia are sadly in parallel on the numbers of teachers lost to the profession – a third in the first three to five years of teaching.
We asked our new teachers to tell us about the problem from their perspective: what makes people leave – and what makes them stay. The article below, by Nicholas Hopton, a trainee on the Cambridge University English, PGCE 2002-2003, gives us some penetrating insights.]
When Jackie Manuel of Sydney University and I began our longitudinal research project on Becoming an English Teacher, where we are currently tracking pre-service English teachers through their training and then into the first five years of their teaching career, I don’t think either of us realised the degree of engagement with the wider issues of education that out trainees would bring with them. Far from being passive absorbers of information, they are the model social constructivists, taking, reframing and producing knowledge and understanding in ways which are at times quite dazzling in the freshness of vision they bring.
As we move into researching the early career years, one of the areas of focus for us is the retention of teachers. Statistics from both the UK and Australia are sadly in parallel on the numbers of teachers lost to the profession – a third in the first three to five years of teaching.
We asked our new teachers to tell us about the problem from their perspective: what makes people leave – and what makes them stay. The article below, by Nicholas Hopton, a trainee on the Cambridge University English, PGCE 2002-2003, gives us some penetrating insights.]
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